We Saw A Spike In Traffic Over Thanksgiving. Here’s A Look At What Users Were Doing.

Posted November 29, 2017

Most people think about a surge in online activity around Thanksgiving to be associated with Black Friday or Cyber Monday shoppers trying to get the best deals. CaredFor isn’t an e-commerce site, yet we experienced our own surge in usage around Thanksgiving. What drove that spike in traffic? A community of people in recovery looking to share encouragement and support during the holidays.

The holidays can be a challenging time for anyone, but for those in recovery the challenges can be so great they could lead to a relapse. Treatment providers have published countless articles on ways to stay sober during the Holidays. These articles include strategies on how to attend meetings while travelling and ways to avoid stressful family situations. This week we discovered that our app helped patients and alumni face those holiday challenges through content, discussions, and a group of peers who provided support and celebration.

Key Metrics

Overview: CaredFor provides client-branded iOS and Android apps for addiction treatment providers which is used by their patients and alumni. Included in the app are tools to promote recovery through content, peer support, outcomes reporting, and goals tracking.

Sessions

In total, our apps were used 30% more than the typical mid-week period. This includes an increase in the number of sessions per user and total time spent in app. Our typical traffic pattern peaks at 9am and 8pm CST. During this period we experienced a more even distribution of sessions.

Posts

Users were posting 45% more frequently than a typical mid-week period. These posts included ways to address the stress of the holiday, comments on posts from other users as they asked questions, and users sharing an image or post of celebration. During this week we also saw a significant increase in users sharing their personal recovery progress with people outside of the app.

Inactive Users

As with any app, some users will stop logging in over time. During this holiday week we noticed an increase in users who had not previously logged into the app in the last 30 days.

This data shows us that the app is a critical tool in supporting those in recovery especially during those stressful holiday periods. The number of posts and frequency of app opens confirms that users find apps like CaredFor valuable in supporting their recovery. Most importantly, we’ll use this data to discover more ways to support people during the most critical times in their lives.